Nike Cup 2012

3 June 2012

Jeff Bell

Junior News

The Nike Cup trail

Last years Petone 14th Grade JPL side set out this year to put in a competitive team into the prestigious Nike Cup, which is a lead in competition to the Manchester United Youth Cup and is administered by NZ Football and Capital Football locally. There were initially eight Wellington/Hutt team entries which included – Waterside Karori, Miramar Rangers, Upper Hutt City, Lower Hutt City, Stop Out, Porirua Lest, Wellington College and Petone.

The team began training with last years U17 team back on the 5th December, with a view that once Nike Cup comp had finished we would form two strong U17 teams made up from the players we could encourage back to continue playing for the club and any new recruiting we could do to ensure we had enough players for both. Since the New Year we have ramped up to training three days a week and work every night on fitness and football skills.

The playoffs began for Petone on Waitangi Day with a semi final against Waterside Karori and it finished 1-1 at the end of normal time, this forced extra time of two five minute halves and there was no additional scoring, so it went to penalty shoot out. Petone came out winners in the shoot out 3-1 in the end, as the Petone keeper Reed Collingwood pulled off three fantastic saves and Petone went into the final against Upper Hutt who had convincingly sent Wellington College home (last years winners and a team that ended up going to Melbourne for the Australasian playoff) 3-0.

Petone started very strongly and scored very early and then simply ran away with the result 5-1 in the end scoring some fantastic goals by Jack Millar (3), Logan Archer and Dylan Goddard.